Those of us who live in the Southwestern United States are acutely aware of the multiple threats to our water supplies; from shortages due to drought, forest fires and urban expansion, to pollution in our aquifers and rivers from oil and gas exploitation as well as industrial and agricultural chemicals. The regulatory agencies that are responsible for protecting our water sources are severely hamstrung because it is the industrial lobbyists who effectively control the legislative processes that are intended to protect our waters.

In some cases, the prospects for the future of our water bodies seem so dire, and the threats to the creatures that dwell in and depend on them so overwhelming, that many people are in despair. Many choose to live one day at a time, and go shopping! As a spiritual philosophy, living in the moment has its merits, but it denies responsibility for what we have collectively created and how we individually continue to exacerbate the problem through our lifestyles.

I would like to suggest another option. It begins with actively choosing to be water conscious. This means that we are aware of our “water footprint” – how much water we use in our homes and gardens, and how we model and teach our children respect for water. It involves living responsibly toward Mother Earth and all life. It could even mean becoming an activist on behalf of Water. However, you may not be so comfortable with this suggestion and may not have the time or inclination, so I am going to suggest a simple alternative that is easy and effective.

Each time you drink a glass of water, run the hose or open the faucet, give thanks. Gratitude is a powerful prayer and a spiritual principle in and of itself. The mystic and spiritual teacher Herman Rednick wrote: “Gratitude is the song of the heart. With every grateful feeling there arises a golden offering to the spiritual presence. Through gratitude one integrates with people and with objects. The whole home takes on a glow because of this spirit. It is the secret of dissolving karma, for one makes best use of every condition and situation” 1

There is much in spiritual literature about the power of prayer. Wikipedia has an extensive entry on the efficacy of prayer. Larry Dossey, M.D. has brought the truth of this concept to the world. Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicineis a seminal book about this. One of the most powerful forms of prayer is “blessing”. In his book,Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer: The Hidden Power of Beauty, Blessing, Wisdom, and Hurt, Gregg Bradenincludes “blessing” as one of the most powerful forms of prayer. We therefore have very powerful tools at our disposal when it comes to dealing with what may seem to be a hopeless situation in regard to our water crisis: Gratitude, prayer and blessing. Actually, these could all be considered the same thing because they are all essentially using an internal power to combat an external condition, even if that condition may seem to be beyond remedy.

There is a large body of spiritual literature and tradition that teaches us about the power of aligning the inner and the outer reality, as in the Hermetic principle “as above, so below” and “as within, so without”. Alignment between the heavens above and the Earth below, or Heaven on Earth, is a popular theme in meditation circles and gatherings. Wayne Dyer has popularized the concept of the “power of intention” through his many books and public speaking engagements. So we can now add intention to our set of tools. Intention is another term for expressing the power of using an internal means to affect an external reality.

Before we return to the subject of water, I want to introduce two other concepts, because, if we are going to be successful in turning the tide where water is concerned (as we are also dealing with polluted oceans, extinction of sea creatures and beaching cetaceans), we need all the tools we can get. The power of words is expressed in prayer, but it is also expressed with great force in the concept of invocation. You do not have to be a minister, rabbi or priest to use this tool. We each exercise this power when we declare through our invocation that something is to be, according to our word. When we invoke the power of blessing or healing or gratitude, we set in motion an unseen movement in the matrix of reality.

Perhaps the most effective instrument we have at our disposal in this life or death struggle to protect and heal our waters is the power of the heart. In fact, without the heart, all these other tools are just the rattling of tin cans, signifying nothing. Prayer without engaging the heart is ineffectual. Blessing implies an engagement of heart, and invocation and intention that does not have love in it can be harmful rather than beneficial. I have been taught that the heart has invisible fibers that can be woven together to create a fabric of unity and communion between humans and all life, a practice called the “heart thread”. These invisible interweavings create a field of compassion and oneness and engender forgiveness and benevolence, leading to peace.

Dr. Masaru Emoto has demonstrated to the world the connection between our words and thoughts and the images produced by freezing water droplets. The snowflake pattern of a drop expressing the word “thank you” or “beauty” or “love” has a beautiful, symmetrical pattern when seen under a microscope, whereas words such as “hate” and “ugly” produce distorted, disfigured patterns. Dr. Jacques Benveniste (1935-2004) from the Aerospace Institute in Stuttgart also discovered certain scientific properties of water. His video entitled Water Has Memory validates Dr. Emoto’s discoveries. His book The Hidden Messages in Water and the video Water: The Great Mystery outline Dr. Emoto’s work. He describes how a polluted lake in Japan was restored through the chanting of a Shinto priest. Dr. Emoto’s prayer is “Water we love you, we bless you, please forgive us.”

We are all mostly water and are interconnected through the moisture in every breath we breathe. We are all part of the great hydrological cycles that move the moisture in our breath around the globe to fall as rain, mist or dew. Our prayers and blessings connect the water and pour benevolence into every shower of rain into the great oceans. The indigenous people of the world are very aware of this connection. Marshall (Golden Eagle) Jack, an elder of the Washoe and Paiute tribes, has developed a Medicine Water Wheel based on the Native American Medicine Wheel, for water blessing ceremonies. These ceremonial circles on the land have been created in many states. Often after ceremonies hawks, eagles and other creatures appear, and within days, the rain comes. I have witnessed this phenomenon in Santa Fe at the Medicine Water Wheel we created in Frenchy’s Park.

I love to dance. Please join me in blessing water wherever and whenever you can. And feel free to join me, wherever you are, in dancing for rain. Dance in the shower. We are connected through water, the air we breathe, the fire that sustains us all and the Earth we dance upon. The universe showers abundance on us. We always have enough.